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Joining the fray: the Witcher 2 is among the demos available for web play

Eurogamer.net, the popular European gaming website, today revealed a tie-up with Gaikai, the online gaming service provider. Using Gaikai, visitors to Eurogamer.net, one of Europe's largest videogame news sites, will be able to play demos for full-price games without leaving their web browser. The current selection is limited, and should probably be seen as a test of the Eurogamer Gaikai site under load. Eurogamer, with an audited circulation of 5 million unique users per month, plans to roll the service out to its European-language sites also.

The ability to provide an immediate demo without the time and storage costs of downloading the entire game engine is obvious, both for gamers and for content partners. Gaikai, headed by David Perry, has taken a different road from OnLive, which uses a dedicated application in effect to open a remote session with a data centre and deliver access to entire games.

Gaikai is minimal in nature, designed to open in a web browser, and acting as little more than a channel for the publisher: to push demos frictionlessly to browsers. Perry has maintained that trying to keep hold of user information or registrations would lead to the content creators - the game publishers - breaking off and developing their own games. Interviewed in September, Perry gave a figure of 10 million users of Gaikai, and set a target of 100 million by the end of the year. Eurogamer's readership should provide a significant push.

I have been following some of the trends in, for want of better terms, cloud gaming and web gaming. This potentially highly disruptive offering moves in usison with mobile gaming; as mobile gaming becomes more profitable, new ways are found to cram "full-price expereince" games onto mobile platforms. Meanwhile, browser-based games compete progressively more fiercely for eyes and dollars, offering progressively better graphics and a more immersive experience.

At least for now, Gaikai is happy to facilitate the sales processes of the major publishers. However, progressively faster Internet connections make the idea of all games being played online tempting for publishers - no need to ship boxes, but more importantly greatly improved protections against fraud, and a chance to stamp hard on the second-hand market. Not for nothing is GameStop looking at selling its own hardware to play streaming games - its resale market is increasingly pressurised - having acquired the cloud gaming platform produced by Spawn Labs in March.

There have already been controversial experiments, notably in UbiSoft's Assassin's Creed and Activision Blizzard's upcoming Diablo 3, to make persistent online verification vital to play even when playing alone. It's a tempting vision, but at present widespread access to high-speed broadband is not sufficiently ubiquitous in their core markets. Also, gamers may appreciate the convenience, but losing the ability to play offline or resell games they have purchased will be far from universally popular.

However, Gaikai, OnLive and the recent release of Bastion running on Google's Chrome browser are all harbingers of a rapidly-approaching future.